(NewsNation) — “Never give up. Never stop fighting.” That’s the saying that kept going through Nashali Alma’s mind as she fought off an attacker at a gym in Florida last month.
Harrowing video captured the shocking moment the complete stranger attacked Alma at the gym at her apartment complex in Tampa on Jan. 22.
Alma told the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office she was exercising alone when a man arrived at the facility. Having seen the man at the gym before, she said she felt comfortable letting him in. What happened next was frightening.
Surveillance footage shows the man grabbing at Alma’s waist. Alma says she tried leaving the gym and told him to go away, but he started chasing after her throughout the facility. He managed to grab her and pin her on the ground.
“When he first approached me, I was like whoa, what the heck? Then afterwards when I realized he was there to attack me and try to rape me, that’s when I knew it was about to go down,” Alma told NewsNation’s Natasha Zouves on “NewsNation Prime.”
Alma, a seasoned bodybuilder, fought back. At one point, she put her attacker in a chokehold, pulled his beard hair and continued to throw punches at him. She ultimately made it out of the gym and alerted 911.
“Whenever the whole situation was going down, my mom always told me to ‘Never give up. Never stop fighting.’ I just kept that in my head the entire time when I was fighting him because my mom raised a fighter and made sure that it would show,” Alma said.
Alma said after reviewing the video of her attack, she thought of the following tip: “Keep fighting. But another tip is have Siri on, say ‘Hey Siri, call 911.’ Whenever the situation happened, I obviously never thought about it until after watching the video.”
She continued: “If you’re ever in the situation, like I’ve always said, never give up. Never stop fighting. Keep pushing. Keep fighting. Because you are stronger than you think you are.”
Authorities arrested the suspect identified as Xavier Thomas-Jones the next day. Police say he also tried to attack another woman.
“It’s insane to think that he did this to me and tried to attack another woman,” Alma said. “Obviously, this man has some mental issues.”
Thomas-Jones has entered a not guilty plea to the charges against him: kidnapping, sexual battery and false imprisonment.